Arguably the most exciting part of the current Royals’ roster is the bullpen. Aaron Crow, Jeremy Jeffress and Tim Collins represent the tip of The Process iceberg. One doesn’t have to squint very hard to see those three plus Joakim Soria locking down wins for a contending Kansas City team: maybe not in 2011, but not too far into the future.

Some of the luster surrounding the rookie hurlers has worn off after a string of rough outings over the past week, but we all know that relievers – rookie relievers especially – are never perfect. The question that crossed my mind after seeing Tim Collins implode the other night was how often should we expect a good reliever to, well, not be good?

Searching back over the past five seasons, I sorted pitchers by number of American League games in which they appeared in relief. Starting with those with 200 or more appearances in that time frame, I removed the closers. I do so because we hold closers to a different standard of perfection and they are used in what has by and large become a very controlled and similar situation in most of their appearances. After that, I sorted their overall performance by xFIP, as ERA for relievers is a pretty poor way to judge them.

The above process left seven non-closers with 200 or more appearances over the past five years and an xFIP under 3.90. Why 3.90? Well, Shawn Camp – THAT Shawn Camp – was the next pitcher to come up if I went any farther down the list. The appearance of that name followed in short order by Kyle Farnsworth screamed out ‘stop here!’.

From this point, very simply, I counted the number of appearances by each of the seven relievers in which they allowed a run. The results were as follows:

Matt Thornton – 78 out of 342 appearances (23%)

Scott Downs – 56 of 323 (17%)

Rafael Perez – 65 of 266 (24%)

Grant Balfour – 56 of 213 (26%)

Darren Oliver – 78 of 294 (27%)

Joaquin Benoit – 58 of 241 (24%)

Jason Frasor – 70 of 290 (24%)

I don’t intend to get into a debate over whether we expect more out of Collins, Crow and Jeffress than the guys on the above list. Suffice it to say that these seven pitchers have been effective enough middle relievers and set-up men to pitch in a large number of games over a five year period.

During that time, these seven gave up a run somewhere between once every four or five outings. For the sake of boiling this into real life and not statistical decimal point dreamland, I think we could roughly say that a good non-closing reliever allows a run in two of every nine appearances. The Royals’ Tim Collins, by the way, has appeared in 10 games this season and allowed runs to score in two of them.

Without question, this is a pretty crude way to study the subject. There is a big difference between being asked to get one or two batters out and being asked to pitch three innings and the data above makes no adjustment for an appearance where Matt Thornton was asked to retire one hitter with a runner and did so versus an appearance when he pitched two and two-thirds innings and allowed a solo run with his team up four.

Defining who is a truly effective reliever is a much deeper study and the point of this quick analysis was simply to find out – in casual fan terms – how often one can expect even your best relievers to get dinged for a run. The expectation among all of us when a reliever enters the game is for that pitcher to be lights out. It is not realistic to expect that every time and we all know it, but we still expect it and agonize when it does not happen. When the Royals are up 3-2 with a runner on first and one out in the seventh inning, we really don’t care what Aaron Crow’s WHIP is when the inning is over, we only care that no runs scored.

Of course, there is the second part of the scenario: it’s not just runs charged to a reliever, but inherited runners he allows to score. That data, noticeable to all, is not included in the above study (I’m not sure study is the right word for the small amount of research, but here at Royals Authority HQ we like to think so).

Going back to our list, we find the following numbers on inherited runners and inherited runners that ended up scoring on our seven pitchers:

Thornton – 93 of 296 (31%)

Downs – 54 of 163 (33%)

Perez – 43 of 174 (25%)

Balfour – 42 of 154 (27%)

Oliver – 57 of 171 (33%)

Benoit – 24 of 105 (23%)

Frasor – 48 of 156 (31%)

Using this group of relievers, it seems that allowing somewhere between one of every three and one of every four inherited runners to score is the norm. While the sample size is so small as to be irrelevant, Tim Collins has allowed three of six inherited runners to score – two of those coming in last night’s seventh inning. Jeremy Jeffress has inherited two runners and neither have crossed the plate while Aaron Crow has inherited SEVEN runners and has yet to allow one to score.

There is much to like about the Royals’ young bullpen this season. Ignoring the Crow should be a starter argument for now, I truly can see this group being a ferocious bridge between what we hope will be a powerful young rotation and a back-to-normal Joakim Soria for years to come. As good as they might be or become, however, the above shows that perfection simply does not happen.

Share this:

Like this:

Comments

Written by Greg about 4 years ago.

A back-to-normal Soria is my biggest concern at this point. I’m not expecting any of the three rookies you mentioned to completely flame out, but if they do I think Holland, Coleman, and even Wood or others can likely be servicable? In short, I’m not worried about middle relievers. I like the ones we have, but I think it’s probably the most replaceable part of a team.

Written by airgoesit about 4 years ago.

As someone who uses middle relievers to win fantasy leagues, (because it’s well known that’s the best way to judge success, tongue firmly in cheek), I think managerial success is completely based on observation and catching lightning in a bottle. These guys are the streakiest of players and past performance isn’t as good an indicator either way. Give me 5-6 guys with power arms and a low WHIP and I’ll find my 6th, 7th and 8th inning pitchers by the end of the first month. One year a guy will be lights out, the next he’ll get lit up and vice versa. eg: our favorite whipping boy Kyle F. He seems to be handling “pressure situations” just fine this year.
The trick is finding the guys who will have a great year early and setting roles for the rest of the season. List the number of bullpens to have sustained success for multiple years with the same 3-4 guys. I have to agree with Greg, if it’s not the most replaceable, it’s the least predictable so the most in flux.

Written by JMGesling about 4 years ago.

It might be worth taking a look at those same pitchers and gathering that data in the first two MLB seasons. I agree that these kids are going to be good…but they are just that…kids. Talent gets you to the big leagues, adjustments keep you there. Give them time and applaud the success, cover your eyes in the failures.

Written by Bill in Vancouver, WA about 4 years ago.

It makes sense since a SP’s “norm” for strand-rate is 70%…..anything above/below that can point to some luck one way or the other in their overall performace

Written by Eric about 4 years ago.

Soria is fine. Shaky early, no big deal. I’m more worried about the middle relievers. The middle innings have looked awful…implosion is the only apt term. Our bats can’t compete with the sort of blood letting we saw last night in the 6th/7th. I have faith in the bullpen, but they need to find a groove. That being said, when Woods releases a pitch, it makes me hold my breath like when Elvis Grbac dropped back to pass. Maybe that’s unwarranted, but it is a physiological response…like hearing nails on a chalkboard….I can’t help it.

Written by scott about 4 years ago.

I think Soria will be fine also, it took him alittle while last year to get going. Honestly I would have taken Hoch out last night after the second balk that tied the game, his head was not in it then. I don’t think I would have put collins back in that tight situation either, I would have used Crow for the final 2 outs then went to someone else. Yost I think is trying to find his guys and see how they fair night in/night out so maybe(please God) be above .500 at the alstar break

Written by benjammin about 4 years ago.

The whole point of your article it seems is to search for a way to justify that Collins is not as bad as his ERA states. You remember all the exciting appearances to start the season, and insist that he cant possibly be a 6.00 era pitcher. He is better, I know he is! …He is not. He allows 6 runs for every nine innings he pitches, and half of the runners on base when he comes in, end up scoring. A terrible strand rate. At this point he is terrible and totally unreliable. He is clearly not ready for the bigs. That little frickin midget can kiss my ass.

This is a nice write up, but I got distracted by the first sentence because for me the most exciting thing about this young season is that Butler, Gordon and Betemit are all hitting extremely well. Having three guys under team control who are already producing at the big league level is terribly exciting. If they keep this up we won’t have to count on so many of the farm kids making it big, and we won’t have to worry so much about DM’s forays into free agency.

Written by James about 4 years ago.

My concern with last night was that Collins was even in the position of having inherited runners. I assumed that after Hoch got out of the 6th with nearly 100 pitches, that Yost would send in the relief for the 7th, especially considering the two balks in the 6th. I don’t really see a reason why Hoch got the ball, let Collins or Crow come in to start the inning and we’re only down 2, and a rookie isn’t put into a high leverage/pressure situation.
Granted my only way of following the game is via MLB.com gameday so I didn’t really see what was happening.